Putting the TMI in absentminded.

It is Valentine's Day soon, and that means Gary has to find a Valentine's Day gift for his Mom. Not for you, his wife? you ask. No.

Twenty years ago, the first or second Valentines Day were were together, we were shopping at the candy store and Gary picked up a heart-shaped box of milk chocolates for his Mom. Aww, I thought, that's sweet. (Or maybe it's a Catholic thing. This is because every unusual thing Gary did in those days, like the way he blew his nose or tied trash bags, I attributed to his religion.)

Later that day, we were in Victoria's Secret and Gary found a lacy white teddy he really liked. He held it up as a possible piece of lingerie for me. I laughed, "Gary, that's a petite." I am long-waisted and long-breasted (even then) so a petite teddy would have been all up in my cervix.

"You can NOT buy your Mom a teddy!" I said flatly, no longer fearful of insulting his Catholic heritage. This, of course, is where I made my mistake.

"I can buy my mom anything I want to. She likes girlie stuff like this. I want to give this to my Mom" he challenged.

"That's just weird."

"I'm doing it."

And I was there later as Wilma unwrapped the teddy, and as she held it up, and as the horror engulfed her face. Then she started to giggle. "Gary! This is underwear!"

Gary began to see something had gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Wilma kept giggling and cleverly turned to her husband. "Gary must have thought this was a top."

"How embarrassing!" Gary cried. "I thought it was a top!" Then he turned to me. "Ellen! Why didn't you tell me this was a teddy?!" Much hilarity ensued. I looked at him and vowed to never forget.

It has been many years since, and Gary has played it cool since the Unfortunate Teddy Incident. Wilma usually gets a dozen roses or a heart-shaped box of milk chocolates. Not so easy to find. After we tracked it down at Bissinger's we went out to dinner to celebrate my long-delayed return to full-time status. (I wanted to go home, instead, and watch the State of the Union, which is an interactive show at my house. Gary moons the president. He pauses the broadcast so often that there's never an uninterrupted phrase, much less a sentence. It's like President Bush has Tivo Tourette's. It's fun. It's like Mystery Science State of the Union 3000.)

Over dinner he started throwing out ideas for how we could celebrate Valentine's day.

"I know!" he cried "We can take a bike trip to wine country! It's only thirty miles!"

I have learned much since those early days of questioning Gary's stellar judgment. "We could." I said cheerily, thinking, That is profoundly stupid. We were exhausted after pedaling 2 miles last weekend.

"We could spend the night at a bed and breakfast."

I nodded enthusiastically. What about the dogs, I thought. And have you forgotten that you hate bed-and-breakfasts and we both hate wine?

"We could stay in a bed and breakfast and drink wine!" he cried, a little less excitedly.

"That sounds great. Set that up!" I enthused. He should have noticed I was muffling my permanent sarcastic tone, but he continued.

"I guess we would have to buy bike locks."

"That wouldn't cost that much."

"Hmm" he pondered, considerably less excited. "I guess it would be too cold, really."

"Oh, no, it's been warm." I protested.

He thought and sighed. "I guess you're right, it wouldn't be practical." I looked around for the big thought bubble that had given me away. However, I am not biking off to wine country, and that's what's important.

Gary has a recurring dream. It is the "Big House" dream, and I thought I might track it. He's been having it in some form all through our twenty-year marriage. I'll think I have it figured out, and then he'll come up with "The Big House - version 2001" which blows all my theories. There is only one thing completely consistent about the dream: we live in a Big House in various states of repair and occupancy. But always, always, always Big. In previous versions of the dream:

Big House Occupied by Teenagers. Big House was part of an amusement park we had for ourselves, but then we got short on cash and opened it for a profit. However, teenagers got in and squatted in the house.

Big House with a Big Garage. Big House perched on top an enormous underground garage filled with cars.

Big House On Tour. Even though we were aristocrats, we were forced by financial necessity to rent the big house out for tours. People who walked through tried to ignore us as we wandered around in our tatty bathrobes.

Big House from the Outside. Gary reported walking across an empty golf course trying to get to our Big House. It was empty, because I was lying on the grass by a small pond. A butler came out and served us lemonade. In this dream Gary never made it in the Big House but knows it was empty.

And the latest, Big House with a Piano in Every Room. Gary said "It was like the house in that Robert Redford movie." Mr. Redford is considered by many to be a well-known actor, and thus busy, which narrowed it down to only (...checking IMDB...) about sixty. "The Great Gatsby?" I guessed, not knowing of any other Redford movies in which he has a house. Yes, he said, and there was a perfectly tuned piano in every room. This one is obvious, right? I pick up the guitar and the Big House fills up with music (perfectly tuned, may I add).

Clearly Gary's dreams have little nuance; anyone should be able to figure out what they mean. Previously, some kind of S_____ family phone call has precipitated the Big House dream, but not this time. Therefore, I have decided to track of the Big House dream. Did he dream Big House Occupied by Teenagers when Arzaana-fay was visiting? Big House With a Big a Garage when we were car shopping? Clearly I need a database of some kind.

My husband has purchased a set of very sturdy pet stairs for the dogs to use when they clamber up into bed. I feebly protested that dogs shouldn't sleep in bed with humans, but I think I lost that battle many years ago. The S_________ family treats their pets like their biological superiors. (Just to clarify, the in-laws pets are not actually superior to them.) I never grew up with the idea that my pets were even my equals because they died so easily, and I did not. I did not have much luck with the smaller pets:

Othello, the Black Moor bug-eyed goldfish. Died after first water change. Autopsy was inconclusive in determining cause of death. (I asked "Why (sniff) whyyyy?" -- I believe Dad might have jokingly volunteered his college dissection kit and I took him up on it.)Unnamed goldfish. Died when I was at summer camp. Parents popped him in the freezer so I could thaw him out and slice him open when I got home. Goldfish guts spilled out. Accidental death. I accused parents of over-feeding him. Othello II, second Black Moor goldfish. Died after first water change. Second Black Moor death, second autopsy, also inconclusive.A Fish I wanted to name Othello III, but my mother advised I just name it 'Dead Fish': Died (no!) after the first water change. Again, the autopsy was futile. But, cold cases are often solved years later. Here's some hard evidence: in North County where I grew up the water pipes are lined with lead so a massive amount of chlorine is added to balance the water. Salmonella-carrying green water turtle (name forgotten): Bleached to death. I wasn't trying to kill him, or to make him a lighter shade of green. There was a bowl in the sink upside down in a liquid that looked just like water. Looked like a water turtle might enjoy swimming in it. Mom, who was bleaching the bowl, was horrified to discover the turtle swimming (frantically) in the bleach and suggested it might be great to give the turtle its freedom, like liberating the slaves. Mom and Dad and I drove off and Dad set him down at the side of the road and claimed he waddled off happily in the grass. Or, as I heard later, just sat there like a dead bleached turtle.

Larger animals, on the other hand, were almost immortal. The box turtle and the bullfrog both defecated large quantities and climbed on the poo to escape (ingenious - top of my list of worst-case scenario escape plans). Tom the cat was shot by B.B's, but Pansy, his sister, who escaped after we moved, returned five years later. Sweet Pea the nasty cat took a one-way trip to the Humane Society after Dad died and I did not miss her.

Obviously the smaller pets are the least durable. Birds in particular are far too fragile to be pets. My grandmother had a canary named Tweety (I did not name it) who died while flying freely around my amputee grandmother's apartment. She looked around for Tweety, did not see him, looked on the carpet and saw a pair of wheelchair tracks leading right to (and over) Tweety's lifeless corpse. (We tried not to laugh when she told us about it.) Mom gave her a box turtle as a replacement.

Sandy, my sister-law had a lovely Sun Conure parrot who loved breasts. It would unbutton your blouse with its beak to get to your bra straps and chew on the plastic. It would snuggle into Sandy's ample bosom. And then one day, Sandy woke up from a nap and saw two claws and feathers sticking up out of her cleavage. Crushed by her boobs. Tragic.

I thought of this when Gary insisted the dogs have steps so they can climb up to a Bed of (Potential) Death. I didn't want to say anything to upset the Great Chain of Being that exists in our house: rocks at the bottom, then the germs, then Gary, then the dogs, then me, then the angels and archangels. Besides, I think Gary feels that if he rolls over on Mac or Doug they will just use their superior strength to toss him over the side of the bed.

My nascent band, The Incestuous Pandas (and high props to Libby, who added the all-important "The"), is coming along very slowly. My band-mate Gary has not been cooperating. Friction in the band already.

First, he doesn't like the name. "The Incestuous Pandas?" he asked scornfully, as if it were not the best band name ever.

"Sassafras Brass?" I calmly replied. (Sassafras Brass was his high school Tijuana Brass knockoff band. I am amazed they were not ritually pantsed.)

Also, he decided to practice his drums loudly while I was trying to learn power chords from a DVD. I needed to listen to the DVD and to listen to the noises my guitar was making, which were sadly not at all like power chords. This made me frustrated with my guitar-playing ability for the first time in the month I have been playing.

I sought help from Kevin, the guitar guy at work. I plopped down on his desk in frustration and sighed, "Kevin, aren't power chords supposed to be easier to use than regular chords?"

"Power cords?" he asked, confused.

"Yeah, power chords. I'm having trouble, and I thought they were supposed to be easy to use. They're awful. My regular chords are even better than the power chords."

"I guess, maybe..." he said with a strange look. "How are the regular cords different than the power cords?"

"Well, it's like they expect me to have eight fingers to use them."

"Ooooookkkaaaaaay..."

"And they sound sick."

"OH. Power CHORDS." He looked relieved. "I thought you meant power cords."

Kevin was able to recommend that for power chords I go against all previous guitar advice and hold my thumb in the prohibited fret-strangling position. It is good to have a guru at work.

I truly hope to be able to post a song soon. However, right now it would sound something like this (feel free to hum along):

"Wake up Maggie, I" (look at hand, change chord) "think I got something to" (look up D in book, versus D7, which is an upside-down D, which is confusing, check hand, get confused, double-check book and then hand again) "say to you. It's" (A's are easy) "late September and I" (Gs, also easy) "really should be" (D, not to be confused with D7, and of course it is and requires double-checking again) "back at school." I won't even get into "Oh Maggie, I couldn't have tried any more" which has an F#m which requires much page-turning and book-research.

So, Marcia and I went tonight to see Brokeback Mountain. (Hot man-on-man action.) Afterward, I decided to go home and get a kiss from my husband. I had stopped by his car since his work is on the way to the theater and write "Sex God" and "I (heart) Gary" in the window dirt. So one would think I would get a kiss.

I climbed into bed next to Gary. "Eww" he said. "Your breath stinks." This was true, and I had been conscious of it all day. I went and swished mouthwash. Climbed back into bed.

"Eww" he said. "Your breath still stinks." So I climbed out and brushed my teeth I started back for the bed. "Did you brush your tongue too?" I thought about how much I wanted a kiss. I went back and scraped my tongue. I thought about hot man-on-man gay action.

I got back in bed. I breathed on Gary and he said I was acceptable. He gave me a little girly peck on the lips. "No" I groused, "A real kiss."

So at my insistence the two of us started making the beast with four chins. It might have looked like a good kiss but it was pretty dead. Here is how passionless this kiss was: Mac the dog was in bed and it didn't bother him. Usually any contact between us makes Mac hyper. I pointed this out to Gary. Gary started dry humping me. Dog just looked at us. I started moaning theatrically. Dog glanced over. I faked a fake orgasm. Dog climbed across my head and frenched Gary and clawed his head. Evidently I can act.